


Forgotten

by ununquadius



Series: Tumblr Prompts [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 1: Harry Potter and Philosopher's Stone references, Death, Gen, Master of Death Harry Potter, Old Harry Potter, Wishful Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 00:52:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ununquadius/pseuds/ununquadius
Summary: Harry Potter is the Master of Death, which means he can’t die if he so wishes. It has been hundreds of years and he is still here. What does he need to depart? Maybe a young relative can help him.





	Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> Back in July I asked for prompts in Tumblr and owiradon said: Where harry is MoD and stays with his family as a ground to his old life but forgetten by everyone. Everyone thinks he is just a family friend who occasionally comes and checks on them. Until one of his many times grandchild doesn’t let him leave. I tried to write something like that but it ended being a bit diferent. I hope you like it nonetheless. And a BIG SORRY for the delay in this fic!
> 
> A big thank you to Phoenix4Dragon for being a wonderful beta <3
> 
> Now, go and read the fic, hope you like it! <3

It had been decades since the last time one of his many great-grand-children have acknowledged him. These days, he kept to himself, alone in the attic. Sometimes one of them entered the room to look there for a broken armchair or an old picture, but none of them noticed the old man in the corner. 

It was August. His four hundredth birthday had just passed and he was contemplating dying at last, but as always, he couldn’t. He didn’t understand why, there was nothing keeping him here, he knew no one any more. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, James, Albus, and Lily, his loved ones, had died long ago. 

He was thinking about Ginny’s smile, and the possibility of seeing it again if he was brave enough to die, when the door opened. 

A little boy entered the room. He was nine, maybe ten years old. His blond hair and grey eyes reminded him of another boy with those same features he had known long ago.

He observed the boy, comfortable in his old armchair in the shadows. The boy looked around him with fascination, as if the old things that surrounded him were priceless treasures. Then he stopped and fixed his sight in a corner, in his corner. The boy’s mouth opened and he took a hesitant step towards the old man. 

“H-hi,” the boy whispered. 

The man looked surprised at the boy. It was the first time in over a hundred years someone talked to him. Although maybe someone would have done it, if he wasn’t wearing his Invisibility Cloak everytime he ventured outside the attic. 

“Hello,” he said, and his voice sounded raspy and tired.

The boy took another step closer, with more surety this time. 

“Who are you?” 

“My name’s Harry,” he said, although he could see the boy wasn’t happy with that answer. 

“I’m Leo, like the constellation.” The boy was mere inches away from him now, curiosity shining in his eyes. “Do you live here, in our attic?”

The pointy face, the pale skin, and the name, all transported Harry to his first trip to Diagon Alley. However, this boy seemed nicer than the boy at Madam Malkin’s, but as chatty as that one. 

He smiled, lost in his remembering. 

“Yes, Leo, I live here. Have been living here for the last two hundred years. And you? Have you always lived here?”

“Yes, all my life!” he furrowed. “Do my parents know that you live here? Don’t you prefer living with us? How come I didn’t know about you? Are you a ghost?” he asked rapidly. 

Ah, how much the little one reminded Harry of that other boy! 

“A ghost?” he laughed with a dusty laughter. “Do I seem dead to you?”

The boy glanced at him with a scrutinizing look, as if he were looking for hints that pointed to the ghostly nature of the old man in front of him. He didn’t find anything though, before he shook his head. 

“But why do you live here? It has to be sooo boring! I’d be bored after hundreds and hundreds of years in a room. Don’t you ever get out?”

“Oh, the mind of the old can be entertained with little things,” he laughed again, thinking of how much he was sounding like Dumbledore. 

Leo shrugged, probably dismissing his comment as an old-man’s silliness. 

“Don’t you have family or friends? I’d die if I lived here all by myself!”

Harry’s heart dropped a little. It has passed too much time to feel the pain, but his family and friends were the most important things that had ever happened to him. He remembered the lazy evenings with Ginny, mocking each other, laughing about silly things, tender caresses and the rainy days. He remembered his children; James’ wild nature, Albus’ quiet interest in his surroundings, Lily’s interminable list of questions. He remembered his grandchildren... oh, how much he had enjoyed those days. Their little faces looking in awe at him, their spontaneous kisses and hugs, their happiness at seeing a snail or such other common things when they were little. He remembered his friends, his dear Ron and Hermione, their days at school, their friendship that survived the war and adulting. With his eyes full of tears, he wondered again why couldn’t he depart, what was it that prevented him to join them. 

“I had family and friends, yes,” Harry answered, “but I think I no longer have friends, although some of my relatives are still alive.”

“And where are they? Why don’t they live with you?”

“I live with them. They live here,” he laughed with that dusty laughter that was now his. 

“Here? Do you mean you are my great-grand-grandfather or something?” Leo asked, his grey eyes wide, and his mouth forming a delighted smile. 

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he smiled at the child. “Isn’t Potter your last name?”

“No, it’s Malfoy. But I think my grandmother’s name was Potter before she married my grandad.”

Malfoy! So the Potter and Malfoy lines had crossed at some point. He should have suspected it at seeing the boy. Four hundred years and the Malfoy features survived, as well as the Black family traditions. 

“I knew your great-grand-grandfather, Draco Malfoy, he was my classmate at Hogwarts and my archenemy,” Harry commented, although calling him “archenemy” maybe was a bit presumptuous, having in mind that Voldemort fitted better with that definition. 

“Your archenemy? Why? Was he bad?” Leo had perched himself on the windowsill, his back on the wall and his face looking at Harry. It had been so long since someone looked at him with such interest!

“Well, it all started with a trip to Diagon Alley. Does Diagon Alley still exist?”

Leo laughed.

“Of course it does! I went last week to buy my siblings Hogwarts things.”

“Okay, okay,” Harry smiled. “So I entered Madam Malkin’s shop to buy my robe and there he was. A boy that looked just like you do, but he was so arrogant! He told me that he wanted to be a Slytherin and that he didn’t think that muggleborns should be allowed at Hogwarts.”

Harry stopped, expecting Leo to defend Malfoy, but the little boy made a grimace and said that that was stupid. Harry was very glad that the Potters’ world views had prevailed over the Malfoys’ and Blacks;.

“From that day, we were always fighting. We even agreed to a duel, but he deceived me! He had alerted the caretaker of the place me and my friend were going to be. But we escaped!”

“Sure he wasn’t very happy about that!”

“Oh, he wasn’t!” Harry laughed with Leo. “Our fights kept going all our years at Hogwarts, turning more serious with time.”

“Why?”

“The war.” Harry fell silent, thinking about those times, the darkest times of his life. Thinking about how the war had shaped their lives, and had shaped even his relationship with Malfoy. “There was a war, I’ll tell you everything about it another time. Draco Malfoy and I were on different sides of the war, so it was only natural that our enmity grew with time. Once, he tried a really bad curse on me, but I was faster and casted a curse that I shouldn’t have used. I almost killed him.”

“What? I thought you were the good one!” Leo said scandalized. “I thought he was a bad person and you were nice.”

“I don’t think I’m a bad person, and I don’t think Draco Malfoy was bad either. I tried to be as different from my relatives as possible, and he went with the things he was taught to believe.”

“But you said he was your archenemy!”

“That doesn’t mean one of us has to be good and the other bad, just that we didn’t get on well.” Harry explained, a smile on his face at seeing Leo’s efforts to understand. “We were both good and bad. Sure you’re a good kid, but haven’t you done bad things sometimes?”

“I suppose… I killed a butterfly once,” Leo confessed in a whisper, like it was the worst of crimes. 

“See? But that doesn’t mean you can’t do good things as well,” Harry said. 

“No. And what happened to Draco? Was he angry with you after you almost killed him?”

“He was, but he was doing something for his master, for the war… for his family, so he didn’t have time to take revenge on me. But you know what? In the midst of the war, people captured us, me and my friends. Draco was asked to identify us, and he didn’t. He knew who we were, but he didn’t say anything. See? He hated us, but he tried to save us as well.”

“Wow, he must have been really brave to do that!” It was clear that Leo wanted his relative to be some kind of hero. 

“Well…,” at Harry’s mind came images of Draco’s terrified face when they entered the Forbidden Forest, and his fear at having to kill Dumbledore. Harry couldn’t stop the snort that escaped his mouth. “He was brave in the important moments.”

“Did he think that muggleborns were inferior after the war?”

“I didn’t talk to him as much after the war, so I don’t know for sure. He married a half-blood, Astoria Greengrass, so I suppose that, yes, he changed. He had a child, Scorpius, that was my son’s best friend. But he moved to Sweden, so I didn’t have a chance to have a bond with Draco. But I wish I had, I really liked him.”

Leo opened his mouth to ask something else, when they heard someone calling his name from below. Leo jumped off the windowsill, and ran to the door, looking over his shoulder at Harry, and smiling at him. When the door closed, and Harry was left alone again he felt a loneliness that he hadn’t felt since his time at the Dursleys. 

The next morning found Harry staring out the attic window. It always marvelled him how much the world had changed in the last couple hundred of years. 

“Good morning, Mister Harry!” Leo’s voice startled him. 

“Good morning, Mister Leo,” Harry turned around and looked at the young boy. He had a red face, and his eyes looked like he had being crying. “Are you alright?”

“My siblings were laughing at me because I don’t have friends. I wanted to play with them but they never let me!”

Harry smiled sadly at Leo’s hurt face. 

“It’s okay, you’ll have your own friends to play with when you go to Hogwarts.”

“What if I don’t? What if nobody wants to be my friend?” Leo’s voice sounded desperate, and his big grey eyes begged Harry to calm him. 

“I didn’t have friends either when I was growing up, you know? But at Hogwarts I met Ron and Hermione.”

“Were they good friends?”

“The best! Ron was... funny, intelligent,loyal, brave: and he was the best chess player I’ve ever known… And Hermione… she was the brightest witch in our year, very smart, an expert in charms, and she was very brave too…”

“They sound amazing! I hope I have friends like that sometime too!” Leo looked better now, happier and hopeful. 

“You will, you’ll see.” Harry smiled at him. 

The hot of the summer was making him sweat, as well as his long, messy hair. He pushed some hairs away from his forehead in an attempt to refresh himself, and his old scar showed. Leo’s eyes widened.

“What a weird scar! How did you…?” Leo pointed to it.

“Ah, this… I told you about the war yesterday. This scar was the end of the First Wizarding War and the beginning of the Second one.”

“How?” Leo made himself comfortable in the windowsill, ready to listen to a long story. 

And Harry complied. He told him everything about the war. Voldemort, Lily, James, Sirius, Peter, Remus, Dumbledore, the Horcruxes, the Resurrection Stone, the basilisk, Cedric, the Prophecy, Draco, and the final battle. He talked for hours, he talked about things he hadn’t ever told anyone before: the fear, the pain, the anguish, the desperation. As he talked, he felt how all those feelings left him at last, leaving behind only the calm he had wished for for so long. He felt empty, but in a good way: no more fear lived within him, no more nightmares, just the good memories remained. 

“Wow. You’re so brave! I wouldn’t have done any of that!” Leo said in fascination. 

“Oh, you would, if you had to. But I really hope you never have to endure any of the things my friends and I had to live through.”

Leo seemed disappointed at that. Adventures sounded better from the outside. 

They talked a bit more, discussing Harry’s story, until it was too late and Leo had to go back to his life down stairs. 

Harry remained alone in the attic. He understood now why he couldn’t leave before: he wasn’t ready, he was too heavy with bad memories to depart. Now, he was lighter, he had left behind all the secrets, all the terror. He had left behind his most guarded secret about liking Draco Malfoy. He was finally ready for what Dumbledore would have said...was his next great adventure. 

The next morning, Leo found only a packet in Harry’s usual place. He picked it up and opened it. Inside he found an Invisibility Cloak and a note:

Use it well.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
